The Star-Filled Sky
by ofravenwings
Summary: Set six months after the events of "The Blood-Dimmed Tide". Darcy Lewis has been ordered by SHIELD to a remote cottage in the Scottish Highlands. It has been six months since she has seen Loki, six months since she has dreamed. Only the scars she still bears let her know that any of it happened at all...
1. Chapter 1

_The world is made from bone and blood and stars…_

These are the words that bring Darcy Lewis out of a dark and dreamless sleep. They circle around her, press their sharp edges against her skin, slide like razors between her fingers. Her hands curl reflexively, as though she could catch the words, tease out their tangled meaning with nails and teeth and sheer will.

Darcy turns over in bed, lets her body relax, her eyes drift closed. Here, in the soft space between waking and sleeping, she can feel the weight of Loki beside her in the bed, his skin against hers. She can pretend that everything is the way she had hoped it would be.

It lasts only for a heartbeat, and then the illusion breaks, the veil of sleep tearing away. She looks down at her hands, still half curled into fists. A dream, she supposes, though she remembers none. For the last six months, there has been nothing but darkness since she closes her eyes.

She stretches out her fingers, the small joints popping and cracking. It always takes her a while to orient herself in this place. The tiny bedroom has never grown familiar, for all the mornings she has woken up here, and the narrow bed never feels like hers. Even her clothes in the crooked wardrobe don't feel like hers, some alchemy of the old wood making them feel like those of a stranger.

The room is small, with a single window only as wide as her shoulders. The heavy curtains are drawn aside, though Edith, the woman who comes from the village to service the house, warned Darcy to keep them closed against the cold. The first night, Darcy had taken Edith's advice, and tossed and turned all night, the darkness smothering and too warm. In the nights since, she had left the curtains open, and she has slept, albeit restlessly. Something about being able to see the world outside when she wakes is soothing, even if most of the time all she can see is a thick layer of cloud. Once, when she woke in the chill of midnight, she had seen the clouds grown thin enough to see a single star burning in the night sky.

Darcy swings her feet out of bed, pads to the window. She's dressed only in an old t-shirt and underwear, both items thin enough to see through. In New York, she would never have stood at a window dressed so. Here, she has no fear of anyone seeing here. The village is more than an hour away by car. And after the first meeting with Edith, the woman has developed the knack for coming by the house only when Darcy is occupied or sleeping. Mostly, Darcy doesn't mind. Mostly.

The window is patterned with a lacework of frost. Darcy presses her fingertips against the glass, remembering a room filled with snow and ice, a maelstrom barely contained by concrete and magic. Her own magic stirs sluggishly within her in response to the memory. Since she returned from Asgard, the magic has felt as though it's solidified within her, become a distant thing that she can barely touch. She's never quite certain if that's something that gives her relief or makes her worried. She's not certain of much, out here.

Her fingers numb, but she doesn't move her hand, just watches her skin grow white as the cold creeps over her skin. Only when the chill reaches the pale scars on her wrist does she let her hand fall from the window. The scars now are silvered, the skin fragile enough that she's opened the marks more than once. Each time the marks had bled, she had held her breath until she had seen that the blood was red and not black.

The scars sting now with a thin, bright pain as the cold sinks into them. The scar over her heart echoes the pain, a needle of ice lancing through skin and bone in counterpoint to the slow beating of her heart.

Sometimes, if it wasn't for those scars, she would find it easy believe that none of it had ever happened. That gods had never come to earth. That New York hadn't almost been destroyed twice over. That she hadn't walked into a labyrinth, willingly sacrificed her memories to summon Hel, the goddess of death.

That she hadn't fallen in love with Loki. Walked into Helheim itself to bring him back from the death.

Though the heating system beneath the wooden flooring keeps the room at a comfortable temperature, Darcy's breath plumes white.

Four months ago she stepped off the plane here in Scotland. Two months earlier than that since she last saw Loki.

Almost half a year without him, and with every day that passes, it feels less and less real.

Darcy twists the ring she wears on her left hand. The broken threads of the metal press into the skin of the neighbouring fingers; there are callouses there where she has pressed the metal into her skin over and over. At first, the skin grew raw and bled, but over time it toughened and thickened, grew numb.

If she focuses hard, she can almost summon up the feeling of Loki's hand in hers as they stepped into the Bifrost. In that moment, she had thought that everything was going to be okay. She loved Loki, and Loki loved her. They were going to live their lives together. Hel had been returned to Helheim. Asgard had changed, ruled over by a council, a seat waiting for Loki if he wished it. Everything was going to be okay. Somehow.

On the other side of the rainbow bridge, SHIELD had been waiting. The last Darcy had seen of Loki was him surrounded by SHIELD agents as they ushered him into a black van. He had looked back for a moment, smiled at her, his green eyes gleaming. His voice had come into her mind, telling her to go along with them. Another smile, and the door was being closed behind him.

After that, there had been the SHIELD facility, medical and psychological tests. The doctors had eyes her scars with interest and not a little revulsion, taken so many vials of blood that she was surprised that she had lost count. Eventually, they had declared that they had been unable to find anything physically wrong with her. The scars were just scars, her blood just blood. Emotionally, she was showing the effects of trauma, but was also demonstrating remarkable resilience. Darcy had smiled, and told them that they had just described most New Yorkers. The doctors had not smiled back.

Jane had visited once. She had dropped weight, and she smiled too much. Assured Darcy that she was fine, just busy. Thor had come, too, but had said even less than Jane. He had assured her that Loki was well, but his eyes had not met Darcy's.

A thread of fear had begun to tighten in Darcy then, but she had remembered Loki's words, the feel of his hand against hers. _Go along with them, and everything would be okay._

Release had come in the form of Natasha Romanov. A SHIELD agent had driven them to the airport, where they had boarded a plane empty but for them. Darcy hadn't even been told their destination until they were in the air. A house owned by Stark in the Scottish Highlands. Darcy was requested to remain there until told otherwise, and would be required to submit to any further testing SHIELD deemed necessary.

"You raised a goddess," Natasha had said, her eyes on the back of the empty chair in front of her. She had taken a seat across the aisle from Darcy: close enough, but not too close. "Hel almost destroyed the world. You walked into the Underworld, and you walked out again, a god who also almost destroyed the world in tow. And no matter what tests they do, you appear human still. They don't understand you, and they don't trust you. You're only getting this chance because Thor and Stark demanded it."

"Chance for what?" Darcy had asked.

Natasha had closed her eyes then, apparently asleep. Darcy had known, of course, that if she'd done anything that Natasha deemed a threat, the Black Widow would be awake in a heartbeat.

None of it made any sense. Had she been sent here to prove that she was no threat? Or was it simple exile? Was she supposed to be thankful that they hadn't just put a bullet in her head?

Pain stabs into her wrist. She looks down, realising that she'd been rubbing at the scars hard enough to make the thin skin bleed again. Bright red droplets well, splatter onto the floor.

"You're just going nuts, Darce, that's all." Darcy kneels, blots the blood with the hem of her shirt, then presses the fabric against her wrist. The scars bleed easily, but they heal quickly as well. Small mercies, and all of that.

#

Natasha had driven Darcy to the house, her eyes on the winding roads the whole way. The house itself was smaller than Darcy had expected, little more than a cottage nestled amidst rolling hills. The dark shadow of woodland in the distance was the only interruption to the endless green.

In the house, Natasha had fastened a slim cuff around Darcy's ankle, the black metal sealing to form a solid circle. Sensors within would report Darcy's location to SHIELD at all times. She was free to leave the estate whenever she wishes, but any lengthy absences would be treated as potentially suspicious.

"Am I a prisoner, then?" Darcy had asked.

Natasha had looked away. "Not exactly."

Darcy had thought of the memory of Loki's she had walked through. _A relic locked away until you have need of me._ Nausea twisted in her stomach at the memory. "And what about Loki? Is his prison as luxurious? Or is just another cell?"

Natasha had given her no answer, of course. Soon after, Edith had arrived to show Darcy around the house and explain the workings of things. There was no phone line to the house, and no mobile network coverage. There was a satellite internet connection, though access could be spotty during storms. No television, but Stark had supplied a digital library of movies and television shows. The house library was stocked with books, and Darcy could request that Edith supply her with other specific titles, within reason.

Darcy had taken it for granted that, along with the cuff on her ankle, everything else she did would be monitored in some way. There was no way they were going to allow her free internet access, and she doubted that she'd be supplied with books with subjects such as _How to free your Asgardian god from the clutches of SHIELD_.

She stands, turns from the window. The blood has stopped flowing, at least, the scars themselves looking untouched. She makes herself go through the routines of bathing, applying cosmetics, brushing her hair. One of the shrinks she'd seen while in SHIELD custody had been big on the importance of routine. _Remind yourself that life goes on_, the woman had said with a too-practiced smile. _After the chaos of your recent life, it is important to remind yourself that you are alive, that your life is normal._

Darcy had wanted to tell the woman that her life was anything but normal, but she had seen how the shrink had carefully placed herself close to the room's exit, how the woman's eyes had skittered over her scars. This woman knew nothing, and had no idea how to help her.

_#_

Clumps of Darcy's hair come out in her hands when she washes it now. The shadows beneath her eyes grow darker day by day. She's depressed, she supposes. Lonely. Afraid.

The magic inside her moves, sluggish as a half-frozen ocean trying to move with the tides. Once, the very existence of that magic would have been a comfort, knowing that it had originated from Loki. But Loki wasn't here. Might never be here. This might be her life, walking circles around this house until she grows old and dies, her body become dust.

She pauses, wondering if, for once, that thought will bring any kind of emotional response. There's nothing. Just a bone-deep numbness.

She feels like an echo, fading away into silence.

#

It has become a routine to make her way through the house every morning once she is dressed. There is no thought to her choice of clothing, ever. She wears thick woollen leggings, oversized sweaters. Her boots are study, lined with sheepskin for warmth. They make a hollow sound against the wooden flooring as she circles through the rooms.

The room she sleeps in is, Edith said, the servant's bedroom. The floor slopes gently in one direction, the ceiling in another. There are water spots in one corner of the ceiling, though she has never felt any moisture there, even in the heaviest of rains.

The main bedroom - the _master's_ bedroom, Edith had said - is larger, all dark wood and heavy furniture. A four-poster bed, complete with crimson velvet curtains. Matching curtains frame the twin windows; Darcy has never opened them. The master's bedroom has its own dressing room and bathroom, the latter holding a vast marble tub. Darcy had closed the door on that; like the curtains, she has not opened it again.

Darcy allows herself a moment only of standing in the doorway of the master's bedroom, checking the corners and crannies of the room. She has no idea what it is that she's checking for, she just knows that she cannot settle to anything until she finishes her circuit.

She moves through the combined study and library. She would have taken joy in this room, once, with its two floors of solid bookshelves, all filled. In the centre of the room, two desks stand back to back. On one, a laptop emblazoned with the Stark Industries logo. She opens its lid, confirms the internet connection, then moves on.

The main living space is open, faint marks on the ceiling revealing where walls had been knocked down to create the large room. Something about that irks Darcy; she wishes that the cottage had been left as it was meant to be. The television is here, as well as a couch upholstered in slick black leather.

She catches sight of herself reflected in the television. She _looks_ like Darcy Lewis, even if she feels like nothing at all.

_I am nothing. I am no one._

There's a deep ache behind her breastbone, and she finds herself reaching behind herself. In one of the first dreams she had shared with Loki, she had stood on the edge of the Stark Tower roof, and Loki had been behind her, supporting her.

Her first night here, she had gone to sleep eagerly, hopeful that the shared dreams would begin again. That she could, at least, have that. Maybe they could find their way, somehow, to the rooms created by Frigga as a sanctuary for Loki while he was imprisoned beneath Stark Tower. Maybe Loki would magic something better.

There had been nothing but the deep darkness. No dreams. Just empty space from the moment she closed her eyes to when she opened them again.

It was as if Loki didn't exist, as though their connection had _never_ existed.

Darcy shivers now at that thought, her fingers worrying at her broken ring again. They would tell her if anything happened to Loki. Stark would, or Thor would. They would find a way.

Tears well in her eyes, burning sharp as acid. She squeezes her eyelids shut, swallows hard. Her stomach twists, and for a moment she fears that she's going to be sick.

Instead of vomit, words rise in her throat. "The world is made of bone and blood and stars."

She shudders, her heartbeat pounding in her ears. She has no idea what the words mean, but they sound somehow _wrong._

She counts slowly to ten. Another one of the shrink's tricks, but this was one that that actually works. Her heart slows, and that twist of revulsion fades.

"It's just being here on your own," she says as she walks to the kitchen. "It's just the stress of everything that's happened. It's just the chaos of my recent life."

There's coffee waiting, thanks to the automated percolator. She pours a mug and gulps it scalding and black. Doctors a second mug with cream and sugar and takes it out to the porch.

Outside, the world is green and grey. Most of the land around the house has been cleared, but several thickets of trees remain. Oaks, Darcy recognises, and some kind of pine. She doesn't look closely at the others, doesn't want to know if any are ash or yew.

She tried once, soon after arriving, to search the internet to find out if the branch of Yggdrasil remained in Central Park. She supposes it must, but there was little mention of it anywhere that she could find. Six months, and the world had moved on, found new evils, new things to fear.

She wonders if anyone even remembers the name of Loki apart from her and SHIELD.

She curls up in the chair she dragged out onto the porch, sips her coffee. Her heart lurches as the caffeine hits her system. She doesn't enjoy the feeling as much as she once had. Every acceleration of her heart feels like time moving too fast, her life draining away, _rushing_ away.

Darcy closes her eyes, presses her fingers hard against her mug. Small sparks of pain flare in her fingertips; she can see them in the darkness, like stars flaring and dying.

"Hello!"

Darcy's eyes fly open, and she almost spills her coffee. There's a woman - a stranger - standing in front of the house. Her eyes are as bright as sapphires, her hair the pale cotton-spun colour that blonde fades to with age. Her eyes and mouth are webbed with wrinkles, the lines deeply carved into her skin. She wears a long dress of bright blue, a white shawl sewn with sparkling crystals snugged around her shoulders. A worn, earth-coloured felt bag is looped over one shoulder.

Darcy tries to reply to the woman's greeting, but nothing comes out of her mouth but a croak, harsh as a raven's caw. She clears her throat, tries again.

The woman smiles. Her front teeth have been cracked and repaired with gold. "Ah, lovey, no need to be afraid of me."

Darcy blinks. "You startled me. I haven't seen anyone out here, ever."

"Oh, ever is a long time, lovey." The woman moves to the edge of the porch, holds out a hand. She wears fingerless gloves, the hems unravelling. "I'm your neighbour. Fionnula. It's a mouthful, I know."

"Fionnula." Darcy repeats the name slowly, her accent rendering it as something sharper than the woman's soft burr. "I didn't think anyone lived out here."

"Oh, you'll find us tucked away here and there. We keep to ourselves, mostly."

Darcy realises that Fionnula is still holding out her hand. She jumps up, takes her hand. The woman's fingers are surprisingly warm.

"Oh, lovey, you're as cold as ice!" Fionnula rubs Darcy's hand between her palms briskly. "You should dress more warmly, too. I hope whoever's left you here has provided you with good winter woollens?"

Darcy looks down at her clothing. True, the sweater she chose was knitted loosely enough that she could feel a soft breeze through the weaving, but the morning seemed mild enough. "There's warmer stuff, I think."

"Good, good." Fionnula releases Darcy's hand, reaches into her bag. When she withdraws her hand, she holds a large brass key. "I came by to give you this. It was given to my keeping some years ago, and when I saw that this place was occupied again, well…"

Darcy looks at the key, but she does not take it. "How long has this place been empty?"

"Too long. Blackwood Cottage is a place that should be alive, don't you think?" Fionnula smiles again, the gold in her teeth glinting, though there is little enough ambient light.

Darcy's heart skips. "_Blackwood_ Cottage?"

"Oh, no one calls it that these days, other than those who have dwelled in these hills too long." Fionnula presses the key into Darcy's palm. The metal is hot as fresh blood. "There's a hidden panel in the master's bedroom, leads to the corridors behind the walls. Turn to the left, and you'll find the staircase to the belowground levels."

"They renovated, tore down walls…" Darcy shrugs. "They probably found anything hidden."

"Oh, they won't have found any of this," Fionnula says. She pats Darcy on the arm, a motherly gesture. "If that device they make you wear lets you, you might want to go for a ramble through the woods. Caledonian forest, that is, like nothing you'll have ever seen. If you walk far enough, you'll come to the loch itself. They say the Each Uisge himself lives in those waters, so I wouldn't walk too close to the edge. Though he tends to leave us witches alone."

"Witches? But-"

Darcy gets no answer, for Fionnula is already moving away, her pace remarkably fast for one her age. Though Darcy wants to give chase, she finds herself unable to move, only able to watch as the woman walks away from the house. From _Blackwood Cottage_.

One thing Darcy's mother had taught her only daughter was this: there was no such thing as coincidence. Everything was part of a plan.

Darcy shivers, feeling the cold for the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

Back inside, Darcy pulls an extra sweater on top of the one she wears. This one is densely knitted from a nubbly, comforting wool, the sleeves long enough to cover her fingertips. She adds a scarf and a knitted cap.

The shivering stops, and a minute later, she's sweating buckets. She strips off the extra layers and tosses them over the back of a chair.

It's only when she tries to smooth her dishevelled hair back that she realises that she's still holding the brass key Fionnula gave her. The shape of the key had been pressed bloodless into her palm, and her skin smells like cold metal.

A false panel in the master's bedroom, Fionnula had said. Darcy curls her fingers around the key, the metal cold against her skin.

Outside the closed door of the master's bedroom she pauses. A sharp pain in her palm alerts her to the fact that she's clutching the key hard again. An edge has sliced into her palm; blood wells thinly down to the scar on her wrist, dries almost too quickly to a blackish brown. Darcy rubs the dried blood away on the hem of her sweater.

"My scars are just scars," she says. "My blood is just blood. The doctors all said."

She pushes the door open.

The window is cracked, a breeze pulling the curtains into the room, pushing them out. It looks as though the house itself is breathing, a thought which Darcy immediately wishes she could unthink. She reached past curtains damp from the rain, tugs the window closed. Pulls the curtains closed so hard that she hears several stitches rip.

She makes a mental note to talk to Edith about leaving windows open, switches on all of the lights in the room. The illumination is slight, the globes flickering, but it is better than nothing. It is better than darkness.

She hefts the weight of the key against her palm, the tiny piece of brass suddenly feeling too heavy against her skin. She walks slowly around the room, knocking on each panel until she finds the one that sounds hollow. A brief search finds the keyhole half hidden in the moulding. The key turns as easily as though the lock had been oiled only that morning.

Darcy glances around the room. Suddenly she can't remember if it _is_ morning or afternoon. Here, with the curtains closed and only the electric lights, it could be any time, any place.

"God, Darce, just stop thinking like that already," she says. "You're not some damn romance novel heroine. You're Darcy Lewis, assistant extraordinaire. Hell, you faced down…well, Hel. You don't get to be scared of a house."

A gust of wind shakes the house, and the walls shudder and groan. The panel swings inwards, revealing a small landing beyond. The space in the wall is small enough that anyone taller than her would have trouble fitting themselves through. Darcy can't help but imagine Loki trying to fit through it, hitting his head, smacking his shins. She smiles despite herself, presses her hands against the sides of the opening, leans into the hollow in the wall.

To her right, past where the panel open inwards, is what looks like solid concrete, the surface inscribed with a pattern of vines. The pattern continues onto the opposite wall - the inside of the outer wall of the house. As her eyes adjust, she can see the pattern is also on the landing floor, though worn away in places.

To her left, the landing merges into stairs leading down. The light from the room only illuminates two of the stairs, but when she taps her shoe on the floor, she can hear the echoes leading down further.

A staircase hidden in the wall, leading to…what?

Darcy shivers again, though the air within the wall space is uncannily warm. She didn't want any of this. She closes the panel, locks it again. Throws the key away into the corner.

Doors in walls didn't ever lead to good places, not in old houses. Even Darcy, before the gods came, knew this.

She makes herself close the door to the master's bedroom. Goes into the kitchen, gets one of Edith's prepared meals out of the fridge and tosses it into the microwave. Eats without tasting a single bite.

When she is done, her stomach is almost too full, but she feels better. More solid, more able to ignore hidden doors in walls. She isn't here for any of that. She's here for…well, she has no real idea why she even is here. A chance, Natasha had said.

Her eyes flick to the corners of the room as she washes her dishes. Wondering, as always, if Stark had cameras and microphones hidden there. She had searched, poking underneath lampshades and running her fingers along skirting boards, but found nothing. Didn't expect to, really, she assumes that Stark has far better technology.

The computer sits in the corner of the study cum library, humming quietly to itself. She hasn't used it much since Natasha brought her here. More often than not, when she tried to access the internet, the connection is tenuous at best, non-existent at worst. Today, despite the wind that is buffeting the house, it's actually strong.

Darcy curls her legs beneath herself, fingers moving over the keyboard and mouse. It feels like a dance she used to perform long ago, her bones and muscles performing the choreography slowly now, hesitantly. She spends more time deleting and retying words than she does actually typing anything properly, but soon enough the rhythm returns. She smiles, almost feeling like her own self again.

The news holds surprisingly little. A few mentions of Stark building a new research division, a few mentions of the new wave of peace that had taken over New York. Nothing of SHIELD, nothing of Asgard. Nothing of the Avengers.

Nothing of Loki.

It is as though none of it happened at all. She rubs at the scars on her wrist until small beads of blood well. Those are real, at least. Hel was real, walking into Helheim was real.

She allows herself to wrap her arms around herself hard for one breath, then two. Untangles herself and returns to the computer.

The internet connection is still up, and she opens her email. There's nothing but spam and newsletters, and she deletes the lot in one fell swoop. She hesitates, then opens a new email and addresses it to Jane. She deletes the handful of lines a dozen times before she is happy with what she's written. Careful words asking little, but opening the way for everything.

She sends the email, and almost immediately it bounces back. Addressee not known.

Darcy's heart thuds in her chest. She starts to check Jane's address when the connection dies.

"Shit!"

The house shudders, and then the power dies as well.

Darcy glares into the darkness, as though she can make the electricity come back on by sheer force of anger. Nothing happens, and she sighs. Edith had told her that they were heading into winter, and storms would be frequently knocking out the power over the coming months. There was a generator in a shed behind the house, along with enough fuel to last the winter twice over.

All Darcy had to do was get up and feel her way through the house, crank up the generator.

She just sits there, hands half extended to the computer. Her fingers are curled, her palms turned upwards. Waiting.

"Come on Darce, you're not some stupid heroine in a gothic novel," she tells herself. "No one's going to come and save you, or, worse luck, ravish you. Just get off your behind and get the generator going."

She makes her way through the house, only walking into a wall once and stubbing her toes twice. A box beside the back door held a supply of candles, matches and oil lamps, all primed and ready thanks to Edith.

Darcy focuses on the routine Edith taught her. Candle first, then two others lit and placed in the holders waiting on the bench. Only once these were burning was she to light one of the oil lamps. The wick caught slowly, a thin thread of black smoke rising. Goes out, along with the candles, when she accidentally inhales the smoke and coughs.

"Could do with your magic right about now, Loki," she grumbles as she begins the process again.

She half expects to hear him laugh, to turn and see him lounging against the bench, watching her fumble in the dark. She finds it hard to believe that he would allow anyone to confine him after everything that happened. Finds it hard to believe that he's not here.

Maybe she imagined it all. Maybe it meant nothing to him after all. Maybe as soon as he had a measure of freedom, he took it, returning to living the life he always had.

Darcy focuses on the flame flickering in the oil lamp. Remembers Yrsa, Bera, the rooms that Frigga conjured. Remembers Loki sacrificing himself so that she, Darcy, could survive.

"It meant something," she said, shuttering the lamp. "It meant everything."

For all the trouble that she had with the candles and lamp, the generator rumbles smoothly into life. Edith had demonstrated the procedure needed to get it running the day Darcy arrived, and sometime since had also glued a series of laminated cards to the wall reiterating the necessary steps. Along with little diagrams that, Darcy suspected, Edith had drawn herself.

It's only when she's going back into the house that she notices that there is only a light rain falling, the droplets so fine that they were little more than mist. She looks up at the sky, and sees that the clouds are black and low. Lightning flashes in her peripheral vision, followed quickly by thunder. She frowns, and turns away from the house.

She might not be the scientist that Jane is, but she knows that thunder on top of lightning generally meant that a storm was pretty much overhead. And that should have meant heavy rain, lashing wind.

She looks over towards the woodland - the Caledonian forest, Fionnula had called it - and sees that the trees are being thrashed about by heavy winds. The rain is falling so heavily that it blurs the boundaries of the trees.

Another flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by thunder. Both seem very far away and yet close enough at the same time that her instincts tell her that the ground beneath her should be shuddering.

She feels nothing at all.

She goes back inside, locks the door. When she switches on the lights, the bulbs glow dull orange. Darcy swears, wonders if she managed to mess up Edith's clear instructions. She decides that she doesn't want to go back out into that strange storm, turns off the lights and picks up the candles. Takes them through into the bedroom she claimed.

The blankets and sheets are still in a tangle, and all she has to do is kick off her boots and snuggle down in the nest they form. Almost immediately she's too hot, but she just burrows down deeper, pulls the blankets over her head. Drifts off to sleep.

#

Darcy is dreaming.

She knows this immediately, for all that she and the city surrounding her feel solid and real. She is standing on the edge of Central Park, the place where she had entered the labyrinth and aided in the raising of Hel. It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like a breath ago.

She is standing facing the city, her back to the park, but she can feel the remains of the branch of Yggdrasil that had grown there. Alive and dead, alive and dead, there and not there.

She wonders if her own name remains carved into the memorial there.

It's the first time, waking or dreaming, that she's even thought of the legalities of everything that had happened. She had been declared dead, and she has no idea if anyone actually undid that declaration. Is she still dead? She supposes that someone took care of it - Stark or SHIELD or whoever - but it's disconcerting, not knowing. She can't even remember if she flew out of the country using a passport. Her old passport was gone, certainly, along with everything from her old life, thanks to Ozymandias and his people.

She shakes her head, wishing she could clear out the fog that fills her mind. That has filled her mind since the moment she and Loki stepped into the Bifrost. There was a moment of absolute clarity there, of believing that everything would be okay. And then, after the rainbow bridge, there was only the fog.

She closes her eyes for a moment, opens them again. The sky is clear blue, the air warm and tinged with a hint of spring. She's sweating, and when she looks down she sees that she's wearing the thick woollens she wore to bed in Scotland. In the dreams - if they were even dreams - that she shared with Loki, she was able sometimes to change her clothing with a thought.

She thinks, visualising something lighter, and her clothing shifts, becomes the emerald gown she wore in the Labyrinth dream. _Not_ what she had been focusing on. She rolls her eyes at her subconscious, focuses again. Her clothing does not shift.

"Nice job, Darce, just wander around in an evening gown. No one's going to notice you. Though, this _is_ New York." She looks up and down the street, another realisation hitting here. "Not that there's anyone here to see you anyway."

She pushes her hair back from her face, wishing that she had thought to visualise a hair elastic as well. It's only when she lowers her hands that it hits her that she's not wearing her glasses, and yet she can see perfectly.

Another disconcerting thought sidles in: has she been wearing her glasses at all since she came back from Helheim? She cannot remember, and it bothers her. She's worn glasses since she was six, and though she can see well enough to move around without them, she still needs them.

The light shifts, as though someone has moved briefly to stand between her and the sun, and then she is standing in front of Stark Tower. It is as abandoned as the street she was on, everything perfectly clean, as though it has never been touched. The doors stand wide open, no security to be seen.

That shift of light again, and she is inside. In the basement, standing in front of what had been the entrance to the guard room leading to Loki's cell. There's only a solid slab of concrete there now. She lays a hand against it, and it feels warm, as though a heart beats against her palm.

She tries to visualise what lies beyond. The guard room, the cell. The last time she had seen Daniel Blackwood had been outside that cell. The last time she had heard his name had been in this building.

Until Blackwood House.

_Why_ would they send her to Blackwood House? Was it just a co-incidence?

Darcy's head hurts, for all that she tells her body that it's dream. It doesn't feel like a dream now. When she scrapes her fingers down the rough edge of the concrete, she grazes her skin. Tiny beads of blood well, then the prickling pain.

_Was_ this a dream?

That shift again, and this time she is back in Central Park. In the distance, the branch of Yggdrasil thrusts up against an overcast sky, as black and lightless as though it is a jagged tear in space itself.

There are people gathered in a group before her, all of them dressed in solid black. They have their faces turned away, all of them focused on a woman standing on a platform, also draped in black, her face hidden by shadow.

A woman in the back of the group turns, and Darcy sees her profile. Darcy's heart skips, because the woman has used black marker to trace curlicues down the side of her face. The woman turns more, and her eyes fall on Darcy. And Darcy's heart lurches painfully, because the woman's eyes are solid black, as black as the branch of Yggdrasil and as great a weight in the world.

The woman's lips curl back from her teeth, and Darcy feels her scars grow cold as ice.

Darcy closes her eyes, _wills_ the woman away, wills the dream away with every fibre of her being.

When she opens her eyes again, she is in the Caledonian forest. The sky above is grey, the air damp, but it is not raining. Darcy drags in a breath, releases it slowly. Glad to smell nothing but loam, nothing but the earth.

A soft sound tickles at the edge of her consciousness. It takes her a moment to place it, to follow an almost imperceptible path through the trees to a clearing.

The clearing is not large, but neither is it small. It holds nothing but a tree, its pale branches bare. Instead of leaves, it has been hung with glass and crystals. The lower limbs hold fat blue bottles, several holding what looks like scrolls of parchment, their mouths clotted closed with wax.

A soft breeze winds across the clearing, and the bottles and crystals chime together softly, creating an assonant music that sounds to Darcy as though it belongs to another world.

The music washes away everything: the worries about her death or lack of it, the woman's black eyes. Darcy feels as though a warm breeze is flowing over her, though the air has grown still, washing everything away, making her anew.

She walks across to the tree, aware peripherally that as she approaches, her gown changes, becomes something made of simple pale linen, her hair loose down her back.

She can't help it. She wants to hear that music again. She reaches up and touches one of the lowest branches, and she feels the magic within her uncurl, growing and _becoming_. She can almost see it, a seed germinating, reaching for the light. And it's been dark for so long, and she just wants to _feel_ again.

A sharp pain in her wrist, and she pulls her hand away as if she has been burned.

Where she has touched the branch, a black lacework remains, as though seared into the tree's bark.

#

Darcy wakes to the thin light of morning.

The storm has blown itself out, and when she peers out of the cracked curtains, she sees that the sky holds only high, thin clouds.

She doesn't bother changing out of her sweat-damp clothes, just pushes her feet into her boots, grabs a jacket and heads out of the house.

It's only when she reaches the edge of the woodland that she remembers the tracker Natasha put on her, wonders what the real range she has before it sends an alarm to someone.

And who does it send that alarm to, anyway?

She tilts her head back, opens her eyes wide and stares into the clouds until her eyes begin to water. It hurts, but pain means that she's awake. And she feels like she's been sleeping for so long.

She finds the tree as easily as though it were calling her, though there are few tracks through the woods. Here and there she hears a rustle of movement, and knows that she's being watched by the animals which live there. None of them come close enough for her to identify them.

The tree is the same as it was in her dream. Everything is still, but for the highest branches, which sway gently in a breeze that Darcy cannot feel. The crystals fastened there look to have been reclaimed from an old chandelier, and they are weathered and chipped, but they make soft music all the same when they chime together.

Darcy walks a slow circle around the tree. The cobalt bottles are there, each with their scroll tucked inside, the mouth of the bottle plugged by wax. She looks closer at one, and can discern a fingerprint pressed into the wax, the whorls and ridges darkened with a fine layer of dust.

She walks until she finds the place she stood in the dream, reaches up a hand, but does not touch the branch. _Cannot_ touch it, her entire body frozen, her skin slicked with ice.

As in the dream, the pale bark of the tree is marked with black curlicues, fine and as dark as though they had been burned into the living flesh of the tree. They climb like ivy, extending towards the tree's trunk.

"It was a dream," Darcy says. She shakes her head; she feels as though that fog is descending again, growing thicker, pressing against the bones of her skull. "It was just a dream. Wasn't it?"


End file.
